Tag: physics
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GE Unveils Two Challenges on 3-D/Additive Manufacturing
General Electric Company is holding two challenges that seek ideas and solutions from the science and engineering communities on three-dimensional printing applied to manufacturing. The company unveiled the competitions yesterday at the 2013 RAPID conference on additive manufacturing — a generic name for industrial 3-D printing — in Pittsburgh. Both challenges have an initial…
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National Lab Develops Solar Photosynthesis Testing Device
Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California developed a device to test on a small scale electrochemical solar-energy conversion methods for future fuel cell and artificial photosynthesis technologies. The team led by Joel Ager and Rachel Segalman from the Berkeley Lab’s materials science division and Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis published its findings in…
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Inkjet Print Process Devised for Quantum Dot Organic LEDs
Engineers at University of Louisville in Kentucky developed a process for making organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) with quantum dots and applied with inkjet printing, a common manufacturing technology. The findings of the research team led by Louisville engineering professor Delaina Amos will be presented next week at the Optical Society’s Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics…
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Smartphone Biosensor Devised to Detect Toxins, Pathogens
Engineers at University of Illinois in Urbana created a system harnessing an iPhone’s camera to turn the phone into a biosensor that can detect proteins, bacteria, viruses, and toxins. The team led by engineering professor and entrepreneur Brian Cunningham published its findings in a recent online issue of the journal Lab on a Chip (paid…
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Start-Up Creating Audio Technology from UC Davis Research
A two year-old company spun-off from University California in Davis is designing a new type of audio experience based on research in the school’s engineering department. Dysonics Inc., located in San Francisco, was founded by three Davis engineering faculty members, bringing to market more than a decade of research on multi-dimensional audio from the university’s…
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Optical Circuits Developed with Semiconductor Diamonds
Engineers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and colleagues in Germany developed an economical method to harness polycrystalline diamonds for optical circuits. The team led by nanotechnology lab director Wolfram Pernice published its findings earlier this week in the journal Nature Communications (paid subscription required). Optical circuits work like integrated electronic circuits, but instead of transmiting…
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Non-Battery Power Supply for Aircraft Sensors Flight Tested
Engineers from Vienna University of Technology in Austria and the commercial aircraft manufacturer EADS are collaborating on a new type of power supply for sensors to monitor a fuselage’s structural integrity. The team reports the first successful flight tests of the devices on an Airbus aircraft. These energy harvesting modules, as they’re called, are the…
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Gallium Arsenide Nanowires Boost Solar Cell Efficiency
University and industrial researchers in Switzerland and Denmark developed a new type of solar cell that in lab tests captures more light and generates more power than traditional silicon cells. The team from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, Neils Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen, and the Danish spin-off company SunFlake A/S…
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Fruit Juice Infusion Cuts Chocolate Fat Content in Half
Chemistry researchers at University of Warwick in the U.K. developed a process for keeping the desirable taste and texture of chocolate while sharply reducing its fat content. Warwick’s Stefan A. F. Bon described the process yesterday in a presentation at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans. Bon and colleagues study colloidal…
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NSF Funding Organic Crystals Research for Electronics
A physics professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina received a $400,000 National Science Foundation grant for research on the physical structure and electronic properties of organic semiconductor crystals. The five-year award to Wake Forest’s Oana Jurchescu was made under NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. Organic semiconductors are hydrocarbon substances like…